Northern summer is short.
Life responds accordingly.
Snow retreats. Ground warms. Water begins moving.
Then the landscape changes fast.
Plants push leaves upward. Flowers open. Insects emerge. Birds arrive after migrations spanning enormous distances.
For a brief part of the year, the country seems unwilling to waste a minute.
And there are a lot of minutes.
Qupałuk
Northeast of Teshekpuk Lake lies a comparatively small patch of Arctic Coastal Plain called Qupałuk.
It is tundra, wetland and open water stitched together on a scale that can look almost empty from far away.
It is anything but.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service surveys have estimated roughly 30,000 breeding migratory waterbirds there, including thousands of arcticola Dunlin.
It helps life make the most of a very short one.
A Season in a Hurry
Across northern wetlands and tundra, growth happens against a compressed calendar.
Plants have a narrow window to leaf, flower and set seed.
Birds arrive, establish territories, nest and raise young.
Insects emerge into a sudden abundance that feeds everything above them.
The landscape may receive extraordinary daylight, but the season itself is still brief.
Look Down
That may be the most interesting thing about the midnight sun.
It is easy to look upward.
The better story may be happening underneath it.
Roots growing.
Leaves unfolding.
Shorebirds feeding beside water.
An entire northern ecosystem responding to a season that arrives quickly and disappears almost as fast.
The sun stays above the horizon.
Everything below it uses the light.
Find it in Nature™.